“Boss, they done did it. They kidnapped the White Dove kid.”

Silence reigned in the room.

“Contact Jospeh. We need a cease fire. You don’t just come in and fuck with the Doves.”

Another member stepped forward.

“Joseph already sent word asking for a ceasefire himself.”

“Good, send a confirmation. Mobilise our boys, we are going to go and fuck up some fuckwits life.”

- Transcription of the Nightingales meeting, 2056

As it turned out, Blitzer’s place wasn’t too far from the clinic, only a couple of minutes of walking through some different alley. Honestly, I really didn’t want to bother him too much, pal needed his rest, but we also needed his help. There were two Hives, both we only knew the general location for. True, we could ask the Wasps to get to one, but from Cassiopaia’s comments it was clear that they didn’t want us on their turf and I really couldn’t be fucked to deal with a stuck up gang right now. I was way too tired and sober for that.

The building Blitzer lived in seemed to be in worse shape than most others around, but not the worst either. At the entrance Cassiopaia gave us directions to which room was his, before she left to deal with other matters. She did say that Blitzer had his AI check the door and such, so we should just ring the bell.

I had kind of expected him to open the door for us, but instead it opened by itself and allowed us inside. His room was… well, it was a room. My apartment wasn’t clean, or orderly, so I probably shouldn’t start throwing rocks from my glasshouse, but his beat mine by a longshot.

Blitzer himself was knocked out on his mattress, not even out of his casual clothes. He looked… honestly, kind of like what I expected a Samurai from the undercity to look like. Messy, a myriad of different styles mixed together, but unlike Patrick his look worked.

A bit unsure I walked inside. Outside of the chaos and trash laying around everywhere it wasn’t out of the ordinary for the area. At least from the little bits I had seen.

Without much preamble I walked over and shook Blitzer awake. To my surprise he jolted nearly upright, looking around in alarm.

“What?" he said, in a voice half an octave too high. Then he saw me. “Oh my, an angel has come to save me from the tedium of my life," he said, jumping up and gallantly bowing in front of me, wavy arms and all, “What a pleasure to make your acquaintance, oh messenger of god. I am Blitzer, might I inquire as to the name of the lady that has stolen my heart?"

I blinked at him. Chloe and Jenna blinked at him. Then they started cackling, while I swallowed my own laughter and gave him my best smile.

“Oh my, such a gallant young man I have found. If only our time would not be cut so drastically short. Alas, I must carry on my xeno killing mission, before they slaughter the innocence slumbering around us. Preytell, my dear Blitzer, where are the demons hiding? I must find them. My brood is hungry, after all.”

While I kept the same kind of gallant tone he had used for the majority of my sentence, towards the end I let it drop to something much more feral and hungry, with a snarl to match.

That took him a bit by surprise, and he looked up at me, maybe not frightened but reconsidering his options. He didn’t drop the act though, for which I respected him.

“Must you speak so unbecoming of your children? Are they not your own flesh and blood? The place of demons I can show you…," then he started to run off with his thoughts, still bent over from his bow, his head tilted and looking up to me. “Wait, you’re the Princess, yes? You weren’t kidding about your brood being hungry…”

Finally, he stood up straight, then stretched, “Ugh… Wait, three hours? That’s nothing… No, I don’t want your stupid drink, I’d rather drink my piss!”

Jenna looked at him strangely, but I just nodded sagely, “That brew is made by the devil, I tell you," I said in a solemn voice.

“Fucking yeah it is," Blitzer agreed, then shook himself, “Guess you’re here to help. First one to go with my entire spiel too. Most people fuck off and leave me alone when I do that.”

“Well, you have found the one joytoy who likes to perform," I say with a winning grin, “Now, xenos. Nothing against you, but we only have barely more sleep than you do and I'd rather get this done quickly so that I can head home and sleep for two days straight.”

He snorted, “Yeah, right. I guess three hours of sleep for… twenty eight hours awake is a good enough balance," he said, then yawned wide, which made the rest of us yawn too. “Okay, maybe not, but it has to suffice.”

He stepped over to the table which was a mess, then gingerly around it to go to the fridge, grabbed himself… a bottle of something, opened it, and gulped it down. With a satisfied sigh he turned around to us again, “We got two hives done here. I placed some turrets down where it would help, but I needed some rest. Nearly collapsed on the way here. The hives weren’t big a couple hours ago, but they grow fast. I put in a request for help, but you know how people are about the undercity. Am I glad that at least you are willing to help.”

“Well,” I said, shrugging, “It is only a stone’s throw from here to the redlight district. So I’m mainly here to protect my own turf. But I did drop off some meds with the White Doves, I heard they run the doctors. Still need to talk to them, having some of them in the redlight district would be nice.”

His face softened, “Thank you. Even if you didn’t just do it from the kindness of your heart, those guys use all the help they can get.”

“No worries. So, wanna show us the way or just brief us? I won’t fault you for going back to sleep.”

“Nah, I’m awake now, would feel like shit if I just let three beauties run off to their death.”

I chuckled, “What a gallant young man," I cooed in the same voice as earlier, making him smirk. Although I did hear his heartbeat quicken just slightly.

“What can I say, I’m a charmer.”

I think everyone in the room knew he was full of shit, but none of us commented.

“Anyways,” he said after a prolonged moment of silence, then weaselled his way out of the room, “Let’s go before I fall asleep again.”

Blitzer did know his turf well, within only a couple of minutes we had crossed a good part of the undercity, on our way to where the hive was. While we walked we talked.

“So, Blitzer, hm? Where’s that name come from?" I asked, curious.

“Oh, it’s the name of some old game’s protagonist. I ran with the look for a couple days, before I changed it up. Name stuck though,” he shrugged, “I run the place down here, more or less. Well, not run run, I’m not in charge or anything, but I run the protective stuff. Keep people playing fair, mostly, make sure they’re looked after. I know other Samurai have a theme or some such, but I don’t have that luxury. I get what I need to get to solve the problems the people here have. But that means I’m always spread thin. Don’t think I’ve ever gotten above five hundred points after I first became a Samurai, even though I helped a bit around the edges of other incursions.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Damn… That’s… not good,” I said, and he nodded.

“It’s how life is down here. Honestly, I’m kind of hoping you’d be around for more than just today, in case I need some help. Most people don’t care enough, and even though the Family does what they can, they are also just a corp.”

“But aren’t they run by Samurai?" That should make them help more, right?

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean they have the resources to help everyone. The Family deals with North America in its entirety. And even if it doesn’t feel like it, there aren’t many of us. Really, the fact that we have what, eight? New Samurai here, it’s a miracle.”

“Seven. One of the other rookies died yesterday,” I said with a frown, “Shit’s not a tea party, accidents can happen all the time…”

“Damn… Yeah, things aren’t easy. And even if some Samurai help others, undercity always comes short, no matter where you look.”

“So do the other lower districts, just not that bad, I guess.”

“Basically, yeah. Doesn’t help that outside of the Dragon Queen we don’t really have any high powered Samurai in the city. Some mid tiers, sure, Shrapnel does what he can, but most of us are low tier.”

I frowned at him, “Never paid much attention to how many Samurai we have around… Always thought we had enough to keep us safe.”

His reply was a snort, a short and shallow thing lacking all amusement, “No, not really. Dragon Queen is our biggest hitter. She coordinates the rest of us when she can. Outside of that we have Shrapnel, who might be the highest Tier after her, then we have Thunderclaw, maybe Tentacles if you want to count them into the mid tier. Outside of that there are rookies like you and me. We had more at some point, some years back if what I heard is true, but most of those died in an incursion a bit west of here. Some stupidly powerful stealth hive kept under the radar long enough to produce some really nasty models and surprised most of our Samurai.”

“How come I didn’t hear about that?”

He frowned, “They kept it secret to prevent an all out panic. The Hive is still active, much better monitored now, but buried deep. Once in a while it produces some more Twenty-Two’s to run around and make more Hives. It’s why Bahamut isn’t around, she has to deal with another one of those.”

He shook his head, “Anyways, enough of those depressing topics. Right now we have to deal with our own issues. Talking about that, where’d you leave your attack dog? That giant thing near the southern gates was yours, right?"

“Well, yeah, although we did put it together with the three of us, pooling points and catalogues, otherwise it wouldn’t nearly have been that impressive.”

“Oh damn, I never got the chance to do that,” he looked positively envious.

“You should try it sometimes. Anyways, Snuffles had to be sacrificed to destroy a hive in the industrial area, and even then a Twenty-One nearly killed the lot of us.”

His eyes were wide as he snapped to me, “Twenty-One?!”

I grimaced, “Yeah, fuckers were growing a couple of them there… Don’t wanna think about what would have happened if they’d escape.”

“Lots of chaos and destruction…”

Rounding a corner he pointed forwards, “The first hive is just behind the junkyard ahead. Was the smaller of the two when I went to bed, but you never know, these things can sprout like mushrooms.”

I nodded, then looked back to Chloe and Jenna, interrupting their own conversation. “Okay, any ideas or plans? I really much rather deal with things quickly. Thinking about another really big purchase just to get things sorted quickly.”

Jenna shrugged, “I got roughly 4500 points to spend, but I think we should check the Hive first before we decide. If it’s just a matter of running in and blowing shit up then we can save on points.”

“Yeah,” Chloe agreed, “Otherwise I’d say the plan is as simple as that. Scout ahead, then go in if we can, plant a big fuck off bomb, before we leave.”

“Makes sense I guess,” I muttered, then turned to the Hatchling that had my Hexclaw Shadow draped over her shoulders, “Well then Kitty, time to do your job.”

The Shadow slowly undraped itself and jumped down elegantly, before it started to run off towards the Hive, turning invisible a couple of steps in.

I quickly invited Blitzer into my virtual realm and started posting the live feed from the Shadow onto the main screen.

“Shit…” Blitzer muttered when my little pet came closer to the entrance, “Those are a lot more xenos than had been there last night.”

I grimaced, not liking the implication. I knew hives could grow fast from Chloe’s stories, but I didn’t realise just how fast. I mean, I guess I should have figured that out, considering the hive we destroyed earlier had Twenty-Ones growing.

Well, whatever, we had to deal with it either way.

My little pet snuck past the aliens running around and into the junkyard beyond, keeping close to the tracks of the xenos that had pulled biomass into the hole in the ground.

And junkyard was right, the Hive had nested itself deep in a junkpit that had collapsed to the storage areas below. Which, truth be told, were pretty much junk as well, considering the shit I saw laying around, but that was besides the point.

Strangely the Hive did look smaller than the one we had found, the thick roots not quite as oppressive. That didn’t mesh well with the visible activity though.

On the way in my little pet passed some pools of a strange liquid; from Kaysa’s comment and the xenos throwing either trash or themselves in, those were the digestive tract of the antithesis.

I ignored it for now, wasn’t like I could do much about it, and sent my little pet deeper into the Hive, trying to figure out where the central growth chamber was, but it didn’t manage to get there. Instead I was cut off by… something, much too fast to follow. Whatever it was annihilated my little kitty cat before I even realised what was happening.

That was a Model Thirteen. They are the guardians of the Hive.

“Great, so they know we are here…,” I muttered, then shook my head. Didn’t matter now, we still had to deal with it.

“How’s it looking?" Jenna asked me, keeping her eyes on the entrance, bow already in hand.

“Not sure… It looks to be smaller, I couldn’t see any Twenty-Ones, so that’s good, but there is a lot of activity around, which makes me a bit hesitant. Couldn’t get into the center either, some model Thirteen annihilated my little drone.”

“Hm…” Chloe was thoughtful for a moment, before she looked around our little group, “I think I have an idea. It’s basically the same plan as we had around Paradise Hills, but with a bit of a different setup. Smaller Lure and much more defences directly outside of the Hive. Try to get their attention, then sneak inside and blow the place to pieces.”

I nodded slowly, thinking about it. It could work and give us opportunity to make some points and ensure the xenos are busy, so they won’t run off to try and eat more innocent bystanders.

“I like it,” I decided, and looked at Jenna and Blitzer.

Jenna nodded in turn, a thoughtful look on her face, “Yeah… It would play to our strengths, we are much better at defensive stuff than we are at offensive stuff. If we can get them to focus on attacking us, while we have the opportunity to sneak by them and blow them up our chances should be much better.”

“I don’t know a better way,” Blitzer said with a shrug, “I’m not good at open combat. I got some light defensive stuff, turrets and the like, but nothing that can deal with anything above a M6 reliably. Honestly, for this I’ll rely on your expertise and hope I can snatch some points.”

“That would actually work well with this plan then,” Chloe said, snapping her fingers, “Either you place down some turrets of your own to make some points, or you stay near the Lure to help actively defend it while we deal with the Hive. Either way you get to make some points and help out.”

He seemed to consider that, a little bit of a frown on his face. “I guess… Not sure what would be better though. Hades has some ideas for turrets that I could use to help protect your lure, but he also said that being further away means I get less points from them…”

After another moment he shook his head, “Then again, even if the Hive might be more dangerous I much rather stick closer to you, just in case shit goes sideways. Safer that way.”

“Okay,” I said with a smile, then looked around the group once more, “So we got our plan. Where do you want to set up the Lure, Chloe?”

We weren’t far from the Hive entrance that my little spy drone had found, with a few good options for our little defensive position. Chloe went over them in my Virtual realm real quick, before she put some schematics of the area on the main screen. They were only rough estimations that Kaysa had put together, considering that the net around here was rather spotty and not every place had a working camera. The list of disclaimers under the map was long enough to rival some novels.

“I think here’s the best place,” Chloe started, a red dot popping up on the map not far from us, “There is nothing of value behind it from the direction of the Hive, so even if the aliens get through and further away we don’t put anyone into immediate danger. Additionally there is an old building that could work as a bunker of sorts. Nothing too impressive, but it would make it harder for the xenos to break through.”

Another set of schematics popped onto the screen, a rough draft of a possible set up for the defensive armaments. “This is a rough plan for how we could set things up inside, but we need to see how the outside looks in detail before we can finalise the plans. Best head over and check it out.”

She nodded at us and we nodded at her in turn. Without further ado she turned and started leading us to where she wanted to set up. Time to fuck up another Hive.